...RT: Could you summarize for us the tried and tested steps that will lead from IMF loans, to Ukraine’s best assets ending up in private Western hands – the IMF’s ‘knee-breaker’ role as you memorably described it as?

Michael Hudson: The basic principle to bear in mind is that finance today is war by non-military means. The aim of getting a country in debt is to obtain its economic surplus, ending up with its property. The main property to obtain is that which can produce exports and generate foreign exchange. For Ukraine, this means mainly the Eastern manufacturing and mining companies, which presently are held in the hands of the oligarchs. For foreign investors, the problem is how to transfer these assets and their revenue into foreign hands – in an economy whose international payments are in chronic deficit as a result of the failed post-1991 restructuring. That is where the IMF comes in...Such loans come with“conditionalities” that impose austerity...

MH: The IMF’s “conditionality” is that it “pacify” the East. Pacification may occur violently in today’s Orwellian rhetoric. The only way in which actual political and economic peace can be achieved is by a loose federalization of Ukraine, to make each region independent of the kleptocrats in Kiev, who are appointed mainly from the West....Austerity is ultimately a policy – nobody is holding gun to their head, except when political leaders are assassinated as in Chile in 1974 under Pinochet with the US Government behind it. In this sense, Ukraine today is a replay of Chile four decades ago...MH: Ukraine’s leaders are mainly kleptocrats. Their aim is not to help the country, but to help consolidate their own power. George Soros has written that their best way to do this is to find Western partners. This will provide US and European backing for the kleptocrats tightening their hold on the economy. Western support will provide more IMF and European lending to support the currency so that the Ukrainian oligarchs can move their money safely to the West, to British banks and US banks...

MH: The EU hardly can really make Ukraine a member. One reason is that a key policy underlying French and German creation of the original Common Market in 1957 was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Ukraine has rich Western land, and that part of the country is largely still rural. Foreign investors would like to buy it out and “re-feudalize” it, creating large business farms. But the EU is unlikely to provide the subsidies that financed mechanization and capital investment in Western European agriculture...MH: What is at issue is whether economies throughout the world will let financial leverage dismantle the power of elected governments, and hence of democracy. Governments are sovereign. No government actually needs to pay foreign debts or submit to policies that negate the three definitions of a state: to create its own money, to levy taxes, and to declare war.

At issue is who shall rule the world: the emerging 1% as a financial oligarchy, or elected governments. The two sets of aims are antithetical: rising living standards and national independence, or a renting economy, austerity and international dependency.

EU Association Agreement with Ukraine Is a Gift to Kleptocrats by Michael Hudson

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugxqH5u5dPc

Ukraine: Bureaucratic Bliss by Michael Hudson

michael-hudson.com/2014/07/ukraine-bureaucratic-bliss/

...HUDSON: Well, I’m going to begin by putting it in the big picture, and then I’ll get to the details. The big picture is that this is a form of colonialism almost identical to what Europe did in Africa and Latin America and the Near East. What it did in the 19th century in Africa, where property was owned communally, was it would go to the chieftains of a given tribe, as it did to the Saudi Arabian chieftains, and it would say, well, to make an agreement, you have to register all this oil of your country, but you register it in your own name. And once they registered it in their own name, then Britain or France or the other European powers could make a deal that the chieftains could then sell this property or make contracts on behalf of oil or minerals with the European colonial powers. And that’s how the colonial powers pried away all of this property from what had been tribal possession or communal possession.

Well, as you know, what happened in the Ukraine and the rest of Central Europe after 1991 was all of this public property that was the legacy of the Soviet domination was simply registered in the names of the factory managers. So Ukraine has been called the Nigeria of the North for a good reason. The factory managers and all the leading kleptocrats simply registered their factories in their own name and took it over. And now it’s time for stage two of the process, and stage two is basically the agreement that was signed last Friday.

And the agreement is not so much of a trade agreement, but it’s an investment agreement. Now, you’ve–as I think I’ve mentioned in an earlier so on The Real News Network, George Soros had wrote in The New York Review of Books, that the Ukrainian kleptocrats should make partners of the European, the Western Europeans and Americans like himself. They should sell out part ownership to the foreign investors that’ll take over. So, basically, this is the objective of Europe. They want–there’s been a very heavy purchase of Ukrainian farmland, and they intend to buy as much infrastructure as they can by the results of this deal, which are going to throw Ukraine’s trade balance and tax balance way, way into deficit...There’s not going to be any exports to Europe, because Europe, the last thing the Europeans want is any competition from the Ukraine, until such time as the Europeans can buy out Ukrainian agriculture, kick the Ukrainians off the land, and turn them into mechanized farming, and then take all the food and the land rent and the value of the food to the West...

The Western oligarchy wants to extinguish knowledge of alternate "3rd Way" Economic systems:

Robert Stark interviews Kerry Bolton on Peron & Peronism

www.starktruthradio.com/?p=426

Robert Stark talks to Kerry Bolton about his book “Peron and Peronism,” on Argentina’s Juan Person and his legacy. “Peron and Peronism is published by Black House Publishing.

•Juan Peron’s biography

•Third Position: opposition to both Communism and Capitalism

•Neutrality in the Cold War and support for non aligned nations such as Libya

•Peron’s struggle against international finance

•Bank Nationalization and State Credit

•His views on Social Justice and how he provided social programs

•Person policies on the distribution of property

•How Peron was influenced by Catholic Social Teachers but opposed by the Vatican

...Neoliberalism is generally an economic philosophy established in the 20th century by figures like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Typical of that thought is the belief that the only unifying feature of society is the individual, together with the faith that the free market can regulate society better by itself than any external regulation. Neoliberals are always in favor of any deregulation and privatization.

Historically the market’s auto-regulation is known as the classical liberal theory of the invisible hand. Usually it is attributed to Adam Smith, although the Scottish economist used it very rarely and apparently with a more restricted meaning... Jean Claude Michea has explained quite convincingly that this suspicion against morality is contained in liberalism’s DNA: it is a reaction to the bloody European religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. The memories of those horrible conflicts, full of religious and political passions and hates, forged the habit of liberal neutrality.

This is a very interesting passage because neoliberalism still presents itself under the ideology of neutrality: the ideology of the end of ideology. Not a political system among others, historically and socially determined, but a natural immemorial fact. The auto-regulating market becomes ideologically a kind of universal category that was present in human history from the beginning. Many critics, following mainly the anthropological studies of Marcel Mauss, have stressed that the more ancient form of economy was rather pivoted on the obligation to give, to receive and to reciprocate...In neoliberal society there is no one who really manages political power. The economy regulates itself and government is organized by technicians who apply some rational choices. This is obviously an ideological façade. To maintain this façade, making people believe that it is reality, is exactly the political problem of neoliberalism. The main instrument to reach this goal is propaganda. Modern propaganda’s masterminds quickly rediscovered an old idea well-known by every ancient mystic: images are more powerful than words. Guy Debord genially recognized this process in his hermetic 1967 “The Society of Spectacle”.......Simplifying, the liquid world is the ideology that subjugates the other 99 percent in a kind of totalitarianism where everyone swears they are free.

The emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are a couple of days from agreeing the $10 billion BRICS development bank, as well as a $100 billion currency pool. It could challenge global lenders like the IMF and World Bank.

The bank will be called the New Development Bank, and will provide finance for infrastructure projects. Its creation will meet the needs of emerging and poorer economies according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

In a speech Wednesday he confirmed the funding would be divided equally, Russia will contribute $2 billion in initial capital for the BRICS bank over seven years.

The bank will start with $10 billion in cash and $40 billion in guarantees. The $50 billion will be eventually built up to $100 billion.

The bank will be able to start lending in 2016, the minister says.

The final decisions concerning the creation of the bank are expected to be made by the BRICS leaders at a summit in Brazil on 15-16 July.

Apart from the BRICS countries other UN members may also participate in the bank’s development, but their total share won’t exceed 45 percent.

The location of the headquarters is still not decided, but Siluanov said the two favorite cities are Shanghai and New Delhi.

BRICS leaders are also expected to sign an agreement to establish an additional $100 billion fund to steady the currency markets.

"We have reached an agreement that, in the current conditions of capital volatility, it is important for our countries to have this buffer a so-called “mini-IMF”- a financial organization which could quickly react to capital outflow, providing liquidity in hard currency, in particular in US dollars,” Siluanov said.

The need arose after the long inflow of cheap dollars which fueled a boom in the BRICS countries for a decade reversed into a sharp outflow in 2013.

Even though the new bank will be a small rival to the World Bank which has capital of $223 billion, or the International Monetary Fund, it will serve as a reminder to the US of the shift in the global economy towards the developing world.

Currently BRICS countries make up over 40 percent of the world’s population and account for more than 25 percent of global GDP.

When the special interests who created and direct the agenda of the European Union disagree with member states, the true nature of this supranational enterprise becomes painfully apparent – one of dictatorial special interests pursing regional policy that benefits none of its individual member states... ...For the special interests that have created and currently direct the EU – on the other hand – it poses as a direct threat to their designs of continued expansion and corporate-financier hegemony beyond the collective borders of today’s EU...AA would also cite another corporate-financier funded think tank, Chatham House – also complaining about EU members pursuing their own interests in contradiction to the EU Commission’s dictates. The unelected EU Commission appears to be pursing its own extraterritorial geopolitical pursuits ahead of those of the individual member states and their respective populations. That corporate-financier funded “think tanks” are focused on this “divide” and championing the EU Commission’s agenda over that of the individual EU members it allegedly represents fully exposes the EU for what it truly is, a dysfunctional supranational dictatorship...

Energy and foreign policy expert Sinan Ulgen of the US government and corporate-financier funded Carnegie Europe think-tank complained about the disparity between the EU Commission’s stance, and that of individual EU member states in an Anadolu Agency (AA) article titled, “Russian South Stream gas pipeline divides EU,” stating:

AA would also cite another corporate-financier funded think tank, Chatham House – also complaining about EU members pursuing their own interests in contradiction to the EU Commission’s dictates. The unelected EU Commission appears to be pursing its own extraterritorial geopolitical pursuits ahead of those of the individual member states and their respective populations. That corporate-financier funded “think tanks” are focused on this “divide” and championing the EU Commission’s agenda over that of the individual EU members it allegedly represents fully exposes the EU for what it truly is, a dysfunctional supranational dictatorship.

And what is done in the name of the EU by its institutions like the EU Commission, which admittedly does not represent the best interests or desires of those it claims to represent, unfortunately and perhaps unfairly reflects on the EU as a whole. For example, and as part of the energy debate, the current EU support of the regime occupying Kiev, Ukraine, taints all of Europe, even as many EU member states attempt to move cautiously or even in opposition to the greater agenda the EU Commission and others are pursuing.

While the EU promotes itself as a bastion of freedom, stability, and prosperity, it appears increasingly more like a hegemonic bloc, dictating to, rather than acting as a representative of, the European people. The slogan “Toward a Europe Whole and Free” rings hollow when the EU Commission begins dictating policy to individual states, and curtailing progress that benefits both individual nations and their people...The EU, in this light, appears more of an autocratic oligarchical consolidation of regional power and resources, not a democratic collaboration between nations. A slogan like “Toward a Europe Whole and Free” appears then to represent Europe, but only from the perspective of special interests seeking to loot the region collectively, rather than nation-by-nation. The dysfunction and dictatorial nature of the EU Commission and other apparatuses within the supranational bloc serve as a cautionary example for other nations seeking to construct their own alliances...